Living Water: Philip Matherne

Delivered May 23, 2021 for the Evening Eucharist service 

“On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed,
“Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.
As Scripture says:

    Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me.”

He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive.

There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”  - John 7:37-39

“Christ is risen.”
“He is risen indeed.”

“Christ our Lord is Risen.”

Has anyone been keeping up with the liturgical calendar? Anyone? 

Well, for those of you who have been keeping up with the lectionary, you would know that the kind of Sunday we find ourselves worshipping on this evening is no ordinary Sunday. 50 days ago, we grieved the murder of our Lord Jesus Christ and shortly thereafter celebrated His resurrection. If we were apostles, around 10 days ago we would have received a commission from Jesus to make disciples of all nations and then watched Him ascend into the heavens to be seen no more until His return to bring a new heaven and a new earth. Today, we would be alone in this chapel, the doors locked, tasked and responsible for building the church. We would be alone and seperate from the presence of God we grew accustomed to for 3 years. If you, like me, weren’t staying abreast with the lectionary, you might be as surprised as the apostles to find out that it is Pentecost Sunday, the demarcation line of the Easter season. I honestly had no idea that the Easter season lasted for 50 days.
For a while now, I’ve been making my way through John as a part of my daily practice of Lectio, and I was pretty excited to see that my homily lined up with my devotional time. In my Bible, I’m actually only one page behind this reading. In much the same way that John has pointed me to Christ, today I would also point you in the direction of Christ in two ways. The first way is simple and something that I’ve been noticing frequently as I have read John’s gospel. It’s a phrase Jesus keeps repeating in this gospel and others. Many of the interactions He’s had so far in this book, including talks with the disciples, the woman at the well (Living water, by the way), and feeding the five thousand all include the invitation, “Come to me.” It didn’t take long for me to turn the invitation of “Come to me” into the precondition, “Go to God.” It also wasn’t hard for me to start searching for the requirements and prerequisites to approach Jesus and His call for me to come. Jesus Himself sets none. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” The passage, along with the rest of John, suggests that only a desire is necessary to approach the savior of the world, and that time spent with Him is the avenue that leads to belief. If you find yourself feeling unworthy or qualifying your approach to Jesus, all I ask is that you would petition Him to give you desire for Him. He is faithful to us. He is risen. “He is risen indeed.”

The second signpost I’d like to direct you by is the way Jesus sincerely describes the Holy Spirit. Specifically the amount of the Spirit He details that believers will possess. In His description, Christ predicts that those fishermen, prostitutes, criminals, and farmers who are listening to Him will have within themselves the same kind of flowing river as the one we heard about in Revelation 22 during the last Well service. He predicts that you and I will have the same bona fide deluge of the Holy Spirit. 2000 odd years later, we see its effect. Like a burgeoning algae bloom, that aqueous incubation has run its course and the symptoms are now showing us convalescent folk. If there is a child of God in this room, then you should be able to feel and hear the lapping of the waters. 

Be still and quiet. Every one of you now is sitting knee-deep in those living waters, your spiritual toes turning all blanched and pruney and, depending on how well we’ve swept and vacuumed recently, little crumbs of Jesus’ body (and perhaps a few cockroach bodies) should be bobbing along on the surface. Unfortunately, I don’t think our insurance covers this kind of flood. If you think that Jesus’ description is merely symbolic, I suggest that you re-read the account of Pentecost and the same tangible presence of God’s Spirit that manifests in ways that even those outside of the church can recognize. If you’ve been a Christian for any amount of time, you know how momentous this day of Pentecost is. “That great day” the church was born. It’s the reason we had our first reading from Acts today (Acts 2:1-11). At the birth of the church, the living waters flowed warm and wet, bloody and purifying, much in the same way that the waters break and flow at a human birth. God’s presence returned not just to dwell among men but within them, and a new kind of life was born. The creaturehood of humanity was altered. 

Out of His own side, blood and water flowed at the cross; and we, the church, we will be united together as we drink from that well of living water. As we take communion together in our poor, flooded chapel, as the water rises to our necks and our faces are turned heavensward with the host of believers through time, until only our faces are showing, know, believers, that the Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters. Amen.

Philip is a second-year intern here at the Wesley Foundation. He enjoys eating and watching sumo wrestling, and has a knack for being able to fall asleep anywhere. Phil is a strong leader of the community and is wants to share the Gospel with anyone who will listen.